


Birds of a Feather

by binz



Category: Gunnerkrigg Court
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-27 23:51:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/binz/pseuds/binz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Parley's ballsy because she's Parley. Kat's ballsy FOR SCIENCE.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birds of a Feather

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ScarabDynasty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarabDynasty/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!

The sky above her is clear and high, spring blue and spotted with clouds. The Annan Waters snake out below, glittering back the blue of the sky, cut in two by the dark bridge. Behind her the Court sprawls forever, all browns and greys in the light; across the river, Gillitie Wood is just as brown, its green mostly shadow. Deep in the Court she can see the bright new grass and hills and tidy trees of Young’s Park, speckled with a moving spot or two and the tell-tale curl of smoke that suggests laser cows.

“Ready?” she calls, twisting her head and spitting out the hair the wind’s blown in her mouth.

“Ready!” comes a chorus, and, “Yes, angel Kat!” and a reflected green light from higher even than her tower where Sky Watcher has turned towards them.

She puts her hand to her forehead, squints through her aviator goggles, and gives a thumbs up back to the robots. It took a while to teach them that, and they’d had to compromise on an o shape for the ones who don’t have thumbs, so she throws in an ok sign too, for the squat no-fingered model working the winch. It waves back happily, both arms, and one of the standing models she has monitoring slack jumps in and grabs the handle before her rope all unspools.

“Ready, Kat,” Robot says from beside her, and she laughs, pulling her aviator cap out of her pocket and tugging it on.

“Yeah!”

She checks her harness one more time, gives the rope and carabiners a tug, and pulls herself up onto the parapet, straddling sideways between two crenelle. Something brushes her face, like heat and cold in one go, right on her cheekbone, trailing up to her temple, and she smiles even wider. “Ready, Annie?”

And then there’s suction, all over, for second, and every hair on her arms and neck stands on end and her sinuses ring, and Parley is standing behind her.

“Hey!” she says, and leans over, hands braced on the parapet stone. “Bungee jumping? Cool! Let me, too!” She jerks up again, whips around to scan the tower top. “Robby!” she says. “Got a spare cord?”

“We are not bungee jumping, Miss.” Robot says.

“What?” Parley says, loose hair swinging when she jerks her head about. She bends, picks up some of the loose rope spooled by the winch. “Yeah, this is all rope. No give!” A tug with both hands to demonstrate, the slack between her fists jerking. “That’s not going to work, Donlan. What’re you doing up here?”

“There’s birds,” Kat says, and points.

Parley braces on the parapet again, leaning further and further out, eyebrows drawn up tight like a caught stitch. “What, on the ledge, between the two walls and kind of under the arch? That green thing?”

“Yeah!” Kat slides backwards off the wall and pushes her goggles up to her forehead, shoving her aviator cap a little crooked, her hair sticking out wild. “Tic-tocs! Two of them! They showed up a few days ago.”

Parley twists, tips sideways, straining to hear something other than the wind. There, maybe, a hollow, echoing _tic toc tic toc_ that she could be imagining. “You trying to catch them?”

“I don’t know,” Kat says. “I don’t think so. Right now we just want to see them. They’re making a nest, we think. Took some old wires right off my table, ha! Maybe they’re starting a family.” She squinches her nose, holds up the thumb and forefinger of one hand, grinning dopily at the little space between them. “Little tocs! ...Little tics?” She shakes her head, lets her arm fall. “Tic-tocs look kind of like Puerto Rican Amazon parrots-- their colours are right at least. If I can get a good image of one, I’m going to take it to Paz to see if she can identify them. She knows what’s she’s talking about! They mate for life, parrots. Isn’t that adorable? The babies are pretty ugly though.”

“I thought they were robots,” Parley says, brow creasing. She purses her lips, considering; shoots Robot a speculative look, eyes gleaming. “Say Robby, when one robot loves anoth-”

“The Tic-Toc predate all current and original models. It is said to be older than the court itself,” Robot says, and Kat buries her face in her hands, pink cheeks just visible above her fingers, and sporfles.

“I saw Carver down there,” Parley says, peering back over the parapet wall, down down down to the smooth Court stones, the spot of red that might be Antimony. “So I came up here to see what she was looking at. Can’t she blinker up and check it out?”

Kat shrugs. “Says she can’t get an etheric fix on them. Keeps slipping off. She’s riding along. Hey Annie!” She tips her head back, waves, and then pulls her aviator goggles back down. “We tried flying up with my anti-gravity plane, but there’s not enough clearance. I was going to make it into a pair of anti-gravity jet packs, but Mom wouldn’t let me. Didn’t want us to get stuck. Ha!”

Parley twists, trying to get a better angle on the nest. “It’s pretty tight. I’d pop down but I don’t think I’d fit.”

“Yeah. I think there must be more space once you’re past that arch, but the schematics I looked at weren’t clear. There’s no good blueprints of this place!”

“You’re surprised?”

“Haw, not really. It would be nice, though!” She pushes herself up onto the wall again, wriggles until she’s sitting between the crenelle, legs hanging over the side. “Robots! Stand ready!”

“Ready!” come the chorus again, and the rope strapped to her harness gives a little tug, tightened and waiting for her.

“Where’s a DARSIT when you need one?” she asks Parley, who laughs, steps back and wraps her arm around Robot’s shoulder.

“Scream if you need help, Donlan!”

Kat gives her a grin and a thumbs up, and takes a deep breath. The Court is below her, all roofs and alleys and shadows and whirling robots in the sun, the dark wood on the horizon cut off by the river and the ravine and the bridge. And there, all the way down, a flash of light next to the glimmer of red. Kat spreads her arms wide, and laughing, slides off the edge.


End file.
